The disciples said to Jesus,
“Tell us how our end will be.”
Jesus answered,
“Have you then discovered
the beginning so that you
inquire about the end?
For where the beginning is,
there shall be the end.
Blessed is he who shall stand
at the beginning, and he shall
know the end and he shall not taste death.”
(Logion 18 The Gospel of Thomas)
As Cynthia Bourgeault points out in her analysis of this Logion, the first sentence is better interpreted “Do you know your origins?” Jesus’s disciples are always looking to the future, “what will happen? When will it happen? What will you do?”
Jesus always reorients them to the life within. This is what’s important, this is where the Kingdom Of God resides.
And we must turn our gaze inside through the prism of our origin. Why were you created? What is your purpose? This is what Jesus is asking in my view.
One way of addressing these questions is to say first: out of the Creators limitless love, that Overflowed. It spilled out in the form of Creation… us and all that we find ourselves in the midst of. That’s God’s job: creation out of love.
The second question has to do with our job: finding our purpose in this life we have been given. If we were created out of love, then our purpose can only be good, to do good. When it isn’t, it can only be because we have rejected that love. Cordoned ourself off from it. Turned the other way.
In this season of Advent, we await the Lord’s coming amidst us. We prepare for The Spirit to come into our hearts. We are patient, we let go of our daily rummagings, just for a bit, to experience the Spirit’s presence to us. And in so doing, our presence to the Spirit.
Blessings….Peter